AEW World Champion Swerve Strickland heavily scrutinized for major botch by WWE legend; Jon Moxley mentioned too

Swerve Strickland recently got heavily scrutinized by WWE legend Kevin Nash for a major botch in a match against Kyle Fletcher.

The Realest Swerve Strickland defeated Samoa Joe to win the AEW World Championship at Dynasty 2024. On the April 24 edition of AEW Dynamite, he faced Kyle Fletcher in a singles match.

Speaking about his match against Kyle, WWE legend Kevin Nash recently criticized Swerve Strickland's performance during the bout. Two minutes into the match, fans saw him getting an injured foot from a spot but the champion didn't sell his injury throughout the match. He wasn't favoring his foot to make it look like he hurt himself.

Kevin Nash addressed this issue on one of his recent editions of the Kliq This podcast.

"That's the whole thing. The pace of the match doesn't allow you to sell the foot because now you're immobile. What are you going to do?... So you have to look at it and say, I can’t vault over the top, land on my ankle, and do the spot at 12 minutes into the match... You’ve lost me because now it’s like [too much]."

Nash also briefly mentioned Jon Moxley and his match with Powerhouse Hobbs from the same Dynamite episode.

"That's the problem. It's one thing for a strike. It's another thing to take your wheels out from underneath you… If you're going to sell the ankle you can do it with a minute or two left. Then you just have to realize that you're going to take a beating and come out of that, you've got to come up with some kind of you know like [Jon] Moxley could have could have done that in his match because he ended up submitting him but you can't pound a guy for in the corner for 25 unanswered blows and then have him come out and then you know it's like…" [From 2:20 - 4:46 ]

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Disco Inferno lauds Swerve Strickland

When Swerve Strickland beat Samoa Joe at Dynasty he became the first-ever African-American World Champion in AEW. Speaking on Keepin' It Official 100, Disco Inferno was all praise for the reigning World Champion.

"He sticks out. He's not sticking out because of the color of his skin. He's sticking out because he's an excellent performer. You know, he checks all the boxes, and plus, it got him over huge when he went out there and just torched guys on the mic out of nowhere... Bro, you know what got him over is the fact that Adam Page let him roast him on the mic, and just like took it, and just walked off, and that again made him a more important character... You don't want to go head-to-head with Swerve on the mic. He can roast you, you know," Disco said.

Swerve Strickland is set to defend his championship at Double or Nothing next month. His challenger is former TNT Champion Christian Cage.